James C. "Jim" Collins III (born 1958) is an American business consultant, author, and lecturer on the subject of company sustainability and growth.
Not all time in life is equal. How many opportunities do you get to talk about what your life is going to add up to with people thinking about the same question?
The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great.
No matter what. Wherever your mind wanders, it seems to turn up at the same Field of Dreams. It's the vision you wake up with in the morning, and it's the last thing you picture before you fall asleep. Everytime you think of it, the idea in your head seems to get more vivid, filled in with more detail: You not only want to win a gold medal at the Olympics, you not only can see yourself standing there on the podium, but you can also feel the goose bumps as your national anthem is played; the tears are in your eyes. (That's how real a dream can be and should be)
Good is the enemy of great. That's why so few things become great.
"Growth!" is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.
To have a Welch-caliber C. E. O. is impressive. To have a century of Welch-Caliber C. E. O. 's all grown from the inside - well, that is one key reason why G. E. is a visionary company.
We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.
Those fortunate enough to find or create a practical intersection of the three circles have the basis for a great work life.
True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.
Good is the enemy of great. And that's one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.
You absolutely must have the discipline not to hire until you find the right people.
If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.
In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious-but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
You can't manufacture passion or "motivate" people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you.
Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment.
A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.
How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?